The Dark at the End 7

The intercom buzzed and Weezy fairly ran to it. She jammed the talk button.

"Gia?"

"That would be me."

Oh, thank God, thank God, thank God! she thought as she hit the button to buzz her through the front door.

"Seven-C. Come on up."

And please hurry.

Once again she complimented herself on the simple brilliance of her solution to the problem of the baby: call Gia. Gia had firsthand baby experience - Vicky was proof of that. But she'd offered more than just advice, she'd volunteered to come over and give hands-on help.

Weezy restrained herself from doing a Snoopy happy dance, but even if she'd given in to the urge, the piercing shriek that shot through the apartment at that moment would have brought it to a screeching halt.

It originated in the spare bedroom she had turned into an office, but now served as a bedroom again - the baby's. She'd put him there because she didn't know what else to do with him. And she sure as hell didn't know how to stop those shrieks.

She admitted she was frazzled. No, frazzled didn't quite cut it. How about at her wits' end?

Nothing she did would stop his shrieking. She might have been able to stand the sound if it hadn't been so loud. Already her next-door neighbor had knocked on the door and asked if everything was all right. She'd have management calling if this went on all night.

She paced her front room, waiting for Gia's knock. When it came she didn't even bother checking the peephole - something she never skipped. The door swung open to reveal Gia and Vicky, red-cheeked from the cold, in snow-sprinkled knit hats and puffy coats.

"Come in! Come in!"

"Hi, Weezy," Gia said, giving her a quick hug. "Good to see you again."

Weezy had roomed with Jack most of last summer into the fall. Another woman might have made it impossible, or at the very least, terribly awkward. But Gia and Jack had such trust and confidence and regard for each other, simultaneously deep and casual, that it never became an issue between them. Not surprising, considering what they'd weathered together.

Weezy, on the other hand, couldn't deny that it had been tough on her at times, especially on certain lonely nights when she felt the need to snuggle up to a warm body, and the best friend from her past and now the best friend of her present was in the next room ...

"Hi, Weezy!" Vicky said with a grin. "Remember me?"

Vicky ... if Weezy ever had a daughter - and she didn't see that ever happening - she'd wish for one like Vicky.

"Of course I do." They hugged. "How could I ever forget - ?"

Another shriek.

Gia winced and stiffened. "What...?"

"That's the baby," Weezy said, taking her coat.

"Is something wrong?"

"I don't know. I don't think so. He's ... different."

Gia nodded. "Jack told me about him back when he was looking for her mother. Something about genetics. But - "

Another shriek.

Vicky put her hands over her ears. She looked frightened.

"How long has he been doing that?" Gia said.

"Since I brought him in and he woke up."

"Is he - ?"

A shriek.

"I've fed him - or tried to, anyway - and changed him and held him and rocked him and..." Weezy was afraid she'd break down in tears of frustration. "Nothing works. I don't know what's wrong. He just stands there and screams."

"Stands? On the phone you said he was only two weeks old. He can't - "

Another shriek.

"He is."

Gia looked dubious as she began moving toward the spare room. "And you said you 'tried' to feed him?"

"He sort of wrecks the nipples on the bottles."

"Wrecks?"

Another shriek.

"I'll show you in a minute."

As they stepped inside the room, Weezy found the baby right where she'd left him: Dressed in a diaper, standing in the crib, and holding on to the side rail. He went a little crazy at the sight of Gia and let out a series of back-to-back ear-splitting shrieks that went on and on. Both Weezy and Gia pressed their hands over their ears. And then -

- the shrieks stopped as if somebody had turned an off switch.

Weezy saw the child's wide-eyed stare directed past them. She turned to see what he found so interesting.

Vicky had entered the room.

Weezy looked back and forth between them. The baby seemed fascinated ... couldn't take his eyes off her.

"Vicky," she said. "Do me a favor ... leave the room for a second, will you, please?"

Looking confused, Vicky glanced at her mother.

Gia nodded. "Go ahead, honey."

Vicky backed out and turned the corner. As soon as she was out of sight, the shrieks resumed.

"Okay, come back in."

The baby immediately went silent at her return.

"I think he likes you, Vicky," Weezy said.

Vicky's wary look said she wasn't so crazy about that idea.

As the baby stared at Vicky, and Vicky stared back, Gia stepped up to the crib and gave the child a closer look.

"Back in Iowa," she said in a low voice, "when I was growing up, the ladies of Ottumwa used to have a name for little guys like this. They called them 'I'm-sorry' babies."

"What do you mean?"

"The mother would be asked, 'Is this your baby?' When she said, 'Yes,' they'd think, I'm sorry." She glanced at Weezy. "Tough crowd, that Ottumwa bunch."

Vicky stayed back, looking unsettled. The baby's stare seemed to bother her. "He scares me, Mom."

Gia reached out and stroked his stiff black hair. "He's just a baby, Vicky. And I think he's had a bad day. A very bad day. So we have to cut him a little slack, okay?"

"But he looks so - "

"Remember what we talked about? People can't help the looks they're born with, so we never make fun of them for that. We never hurt their feelings, right?"

"I guess." Vicky looked at Weezy. "What's his name?"

"I ... I don't know." Gia's puzzled look spurred her on. "If Dawn ever came up with a name for him, she never told me. To tell the truth, I don't think she had one."

Gia frowned. "How could she not have a name for her own baby?"

Weezy hesitated, unsure of how much Gia might want her to say in front of Vicky.

"Well, the circumstances were unique. Dawn couldn't be sure her baby was even alive, so I got the impression she was afraid to name him until she found him and got him back."

"And did she?"

Weezy's throat constricted. "Yes, poor kid. Briefly. Very briefly."

Gia was studying her. "You and Dawn were close?"

"She ... I was all she had." A sob built. "I - "

She couldn't speak. Gia stepped close and put her arms around her.

That did it. The dam burst and Weezy lost it. All the grief, the anguish, the sense of loss she'd been holding in since she'd heard, since she'd seen Dawn's pale, lifeless body, broke loose and flooded from her. She clutched Gia, leaning against her as she sobbed on her shoulder like a child.

It felt so good to let it go. The pressure of it ... she'd been afraid she'd explode. She hadn't dared let go on the ride home - not with a sleeping baby in the backseat and the roads so awful. And once here, when he woke up and the screeching began, and she'd been trying to feed him and wash him and get him settled ...

She regained control and eased herself away from Gia.

"I'm sorry. That's not like me. I just..."

"It's okay. Really."

Weezy studied her. From the day they'd met last year, she'd sensed a steely core in Gia. And when the Lady had told her what she and Vicky and Jack had been through - coma, brain injury, miscarriage - she realized Gia had needed that core to survive. But she hadn't appreciated until now how her steel was cushioned within an envelope of serenity.

"Thanks for understanding. How did you know?"

"I've been there."

She took a deep breath. "I feel so much better. Thank you."

Gia smiled and nodded as she ran her hand over the top railing of the crib.

"You must have been expecting him."

"What do you mean?"

"How else would you get a nursery set up so quickly?"

"Actually, they're Dawn's things." Dawn had given her a key, so Weezy had used it to enter her apartment. "I brought them over from across the hall."

That was when Weezy had come closest to losing it. Dawn had been all set for motherhood: the crib, baby clothes, bottles, formula. She hadn't been sure her baby was even alive, but she'd been ready to take on the role of mother if she found him.

Gia nodded. "That's right. She lived across the hall. I remember Jack being very concerned about that."

"He still is, I'm sure."

"And you're not?"

"Well, we'd feared there might be a plan to use Dawn and the baby against us, but we could never figure out what. It all seems moot now. They put a lot of effort into separating Dawn and her child, and hiding the child from her, but now Dawn's gone" - that tightening in her throat again - "and the baby's here."

"Could that have been the plan all along?"

A shocking possibility, but ...

"Somehow I doubt it."

Gilda and Georges dead, and Jack at this very moment lying in wait, ready to blow the One to hell ... no way that could have been Rasalom's plan.

Gia bent for a closer look at the rail. "This is all gnawed. Almost like he's teething. But that can't be. He's too young."

"That's what I'd have thought, but he's doing more than teething." She glanced around and spotted one of the plastic bottles she'd used to try to get formula into him. She grabbed it and handed it to Gia. "Here."

Gia stared at the torn end of the nipple and shook her head. "I don't..."

"He has teeth."

She stared at Weezy. "What? Teeth ... at two weeks?"

"See for yourself."

Weezy carefully lifted his upper lip - at any other time he might have fought her, but whatever level of concentration he possessed was fully focused on Vicky. Light glinted off four white points poking through the upper gum and four through the bottom.

"My God," Gia whispered. She glanced at the ruined rubber nipple on the bottle in her hand. "I can't imagine nursing him."

"That's why he's dressed in just a diaper. His teeth are pointed and sharp. He starts sucking, then chewing, and it spills all over him."

"Maybe that's why he's screeching like that. They must hurt."

"They don't seem to be hurting him now." Weezy watched Vicky crossing the room to look out the window. The baby followed her every move. "But I think they were bleeding earlier today."

She'd assumed the red on his face and his clawlike fingers was Jell-O or the like, but it had turned out to be blood. She'd learned that when she'd cleaned him up. The only source she could think of were his gums.

"We need to get him teething rings," Gia said. "The kind you can freeze."

"But what about bottle nipples? I've just about run out."

"Plastic sippy cups - with the hardest plastic we can find."

"Why didn't I think of that?"

"You never babysat as a kid?"

Weezy shook her head. "No. Never."

As she'd told Jack, babies had never interested her.

Gia smiled. "I did a lot of it. Loved babies then, and still do." She turned and headed for the door. "Show me what you've got and I'll run out and stock you up with what you're missing."

Weezy followed, with Vicky bringing up the rear. But as soon as the little girl left the room, the baby renewed his screeching.

Weezy gave Gia a pleading look.

"Honey," she said, leaning close to Vicky, "would you mind staying in there with the baby?"

She shook her head. "He's scary."

"But he likes you - he likes you best of all."

"But it's boring."

"Well, you brought a book. Why don't you sit in there at Weezy's desk and read?"

"Even better," Weezy said. "Maybe you can read to the baby. I think he'd like that."

She brightened. "Okay."

You wonderful child, she thought as the baby screeched and screeched again. But please hurry.

"What are you reading?" Weezy said as Vicky beelined for her backpack.

"Nocturnia. I'm on book three."

"She just discovered the series," Gia said. "Loves it."

"She's ten, right?"

"Ten and a half next month," Vicky said.

"I remember reading lots of Judy Blume as a kid."

Gia smiled. "Me too. And Beverly Cleary. Loved those books."

Vicky stopped by the table in the front room where Weezy had left the Compendium. "Hey, that's Jack's book."

"Hay is for horses," Gia said and rolled her eyes. "I hated when my mother would say that, and yet here I am..."

Weezy smiled at Vicky. "Well, hay is for horses and yes, that's Jack's book. He lent it to me."

Vicky opened it, scanned a page, and shrugged. "Weird as ever."

A particularly loud screech prompted her to return to the baby's room and the result was ...

... silence ... blessed silence.

She glanced and noticed Vicky had opened the Compendium to the naming ceremony page Weezy had come across not too long ago. A lot had happened since then.

Faintly from within the baby's room she heard Vicky begin to read aloud.

"She's a gem," Weezy said. "Do you rent her out?"

Gia laughed. "She loves to read. Getting paid for it would be her dream job." She spread her arms. "Peace."

Peace here, Weezy thought. But she imagined it soon might be a different story tonight in a mostly deserted hamlet near the east end of Long Island.